One of the six main goals of the South End Strategic Plan (Good to Great) that we worked on as a community a year and a half ago, was improving neighborhood connectivity. A tremendous selling point of South End is it’s walkability and it’s proximity to other neighborhoods, (Uptown, Dilworth, Wilmore, Brookhill and Sedgefield). There are parts of South Boulevard that are not the most pedestrian friendly and we are working to improve those areas. The section between Tremont and Iverson is especially tricky and we continue to work with CDOT to explore improvements.

The latest pedestrian improvement comes thanks to the hard work of the South End Land Use Committee working with CDOT for a pedestrian refuge to be installed at South Blvd and Rennselaer Ave. You may be thinking…where is Rennselaer but it’s the connection between Crispie Crepe and Einstein Bagel. The image above is not the greatest but let me walk you through it and provide some explanation.

The pedestrian “refuge” will be in the middle of South Blvd and is a raised concrete median of sorts with the necessary cut out so the pedestrian can take “refuge” in the middle of the street while crossing. You can see a shaded drawing in the middle of South Blvd. There will also be a realignment of the crossing so on the top they will remove 2 concrete pads and create one new one that will function for both pedestrian access as well as service the CATS bus stop. (Note the two yellow areas with a space between the two).

Will keep everyone posted on the installation dates but wanted to share this excellent progress thanks to CDOT and the South End Land Use Committee. I did want to thank Malisa Mccreedy for the hard work she did to help us on this project. Malisa was with CDOT but has moved to a new position on the west coast so maybe Malisa will see this post and know how much we thank her!